


or this sweet intercourse of looks and smiles

by oheart



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Dark Will Graham, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Fall (Hannibal), and murder!, learning and teaching new things about each other, newlyweds shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:28:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23060977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oheart/pseuds/oheart
Summary: Life together after the fall. If love is a stab of hunger that never relents, they will continue to find new ways of drawing nourishment from each other.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 15
Kudos: 136





	or this sweet intercourse of looks and smiles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queensmooting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queensmooting/gifts).



> for jamie. consider this a housewarming gift (or it is WORMING? worms manifest physically in your house)

Will finds the guitar in a rich widower's house. He spots it by accident — Hannibal has his hands full and someone needs to bag the heart. He's glancing around the spacious bedroom for a place to rest his knife, when Will sees it, leaning against the wall. It doesn't match the modern decor; it's old and worn, but it's clearly well-loved. The wood on the body and around the neck is discolored from years of touch and friction, but the strings are new and, he'd bet, properly tuned. A cherished instrument. Will waits until they are done and his hands are clean to pick it up. He almost feels bad for taking it, but it's not like the previous owner will get to miss it too much. 

It’s late when Hannibal parks the car in their driveway. Will startles awake on the passenger’s seat. His limbs are heavy from the night of hard work — the vibrations of the electric bone saw travelling through his arms and its dull buzz lull him into a state of overwhelming sleepiness every time. 

Will yawns hard enough to make his eyes water and fumbles with his seatbelt. It’s amazing how quickly the body gets comfortable with new habits — a few weeks of healthy, uninterrupted sleep, and now Will can’t stay up past two without his brain going a little stupid. He looks down at his uncooperative hands and lets out an amused sound. He hears Hannibal tut at his predicament and, before Will can react, he’s out of the car and opening Will’s door, hands already working to free him of the offending seatbelt. 

Will gets his legs out of the car with the full intent of walking to their front door on his own. But, curiously, the moment he’s vertical again, he quickly decides it’s too much work and leans into Hannibal instead. Hannibal accepts it gracefully, even when Will just hums sleepily and hooks his arms around his neck, making no effort to move his legs. 

“This is nice,” Will finds himself confiding to the hollow of Hannibal’s throat, “I feel like I’m made of jell-o, or whatever that pudding stuff you made the other day was. Like you could just scoop me up, you know? With a spoon.” 

Hannibal’s ribcage quakes with a quiet type of laughter and Will closes his eyes, vowing to get him to make that sound again soon. 

He wakes up the next morning in their bed and they resume their daily routine. It’s only a week later that Will thinks, with a start, of the worn-out acoustic guitar sitting in the back seat of the car. 

Will crosses the kitchen on his way to their garage. Hannibal is there, hands busy with breakfast preparations even as his eyes stay on Will, but if he’s curious about Will’s goal, he doesn’t show it. Once Will’s alone in the garage and his left hand touches around the neck of the guitar, his fingers curl automatically into a grip that feels both familiar and foreign. 

A long-neglected memory approaches shyly to the forefront of his mind: himself, waiting until his dad was passed out drunk on the couch to hunch over the hollowed body of an old guitar, too big for his small childish frame. Small fingers pressing down in random patterns, until the pain on his fingertips turned into numbness. Picking strings, until the sounds they made were closer to the ones he heard on the radio. He never bothered to ask his dad for lessons, or to let him know he was using the guitar in the first place, but those furtive moments were enough to teach him the basics. 

“I bet it’s just like riding a bicycle,” Will mutters to himself, dubiously. There’s a faint hopeful smile beginning to crawl its way across his face by the time he returns to their kitchen, though, and it stretches wider when Hannibal’s lips move to mirror’s his own. 

“I was beginning to fear you had forgotten all about your new acquisition.” 

“I did forget,” Will admits as he places the guitar against the wall and they settle down to eat. In accordance to their tacit tradition, Hannibal pours coffee for them both, so Will busies himself with moving the pancakes to both their plates, so that they can start eating at the same time. 

“It is an easy thing for the mind to wander and get lost in this new arrangement of ours,” Hannibal states over the familiar soft clangs and thuds of their shared meals. 

“Domestic bliss,” Will tries the words out loud, hiding a smile behind the rim of his coffee mug, “do you often find yourself distracted by that, doctor?” 

“In fact, I do,” Hannibal offers easily. His hair is longer than Will’s ever seen it. It’s still too straight to produce the kind of bed hair Will has to deal with every morning, but the way it sits uncombed against his forehead and around his ears, and the novelty of it, feels almost scandalous. 

Will feels his chest contract with the urge to bury his fingers in those strands until they stick out in total disarray. To gently scratch his nails against Hannibal’s scalp until he hums with it. Wishing quickly mergers into reminiscing, and Will finds himself lost in recent memories of doing exactly that. 

“Don’t you?” 

“Huh?” Will replies, abruptly putting his mug down once he realizes he’d been holding it up in the air for too long. 

“Don’t you find yourself distracted by it, as well?” 

“Uh, no. Not often, no,” he offers with as much confidence as he can muster. 

The lazy smile that spreads across Hannibal’s face is so predatory, Will has to fight down a nervous giggle. 

Will starts to make time for practice between lunch and dinner. He leaves Hannibal in the kitchen or in the study, busy with a book or his drawings, and holes up in the guest room to practice chords and strumming patterns. Or he waits for Sunday afternoons, when Hannibal goes to the town market, to practice in the living room instead. He tries not to bother Hannibal with his clumsy beginner's attempts, but as he begins to make progress and his ability begins to expand, so does his confidence and Will starts to leave the door to the guest room wide open, just in case. 

It doesn’t take long for Hannibal’s silhouette to take the invitation and make a habit out of looming in the doorway while Will plays. Will pretends not to notice, focused on whatever song he’s playing, but he blooms under the attention. It feels silly, almost juvenile, but Will knows he sounds good and Hannibal’s subtle appreciation does wonders to his confidence. 

One afternoon, Will looks up to find Hannibal leaning against the door frame, emptied glass of wine in hand and looking like he’d be happy to stand there for the rest of the night. Will has to pretend to purse his lips pensively to keep a serious face. 

“Want to try it?” Will gestures with the guitar. 

“Oh,” Hannibal changes his stance suddenly, as if unfreezing from a trance, and walks into the room to sit beside Will on the bed, “as a matter of fact, I never learned this particular instrument.” 

Will startles at that. 

“You- I’ve seen you play instruments whose names most people have difficulty pronouncing, but you never learned this?” Will holds out the guitar again, in case Hannibal thinks he’s talking about some other musical instrument in the room. “I think most college students know their way around one of these.” 

“I was not a typical student,” Hannibal understates spectacularly and offers his hands out to take the guitar from Will, “even so, I’ve been watching you play and you do it so beautifully, I could never hope to match, but,” he places the guitar on his lap, as he no doubt has watched Will do a handful of times by now, “I can certainly give it a try.” 

He does hold it like he knows what he’s doing, at least. There’s a brightness in Hannibal’s eyes and a softness to his smile now and Will understands, with a jolt, that this isn’t merely the pleasure of learning something new. Hannibal is getting a kick out of being in Will’s shoes, of inhabiting yet another region of the landscape that shapes him. The realization sends an excited shiver through Will. 

He proceeds to teach Hannibal the finger placement of a few basic chords, no strumming yet. If Hannibal notices that Will’s voice is just little lower and a little shakier than the occasion requires, he mercifully elects not to comment. 

Soon, Will’s just watching, transfixed, as Hannibal’s fingers move confidently up and down the neck of the guitar, switching almost effortlessly between freshly learned chords. Will suddenly understands the appeal of guitar players. He loses time and gets lost in embarrassing fantasies that he will never tell Hannibal about — unless he asks nicely — when he notices Hannibal’s apparently grown bored of the lesson and has found the pick and is about to start strumming on his own. 

Will sends a quick prayer for mercy to a God he doesn’t quite believe in and braces to be inappropriately turned on. 

Hannibal’s right hand comes down, the pick makes contact with the strings and— 

The note rings loud and ugly in the quiet room. It spills between them like an unlucky waiter tripping and dropping his tray in a high-class restaurant, awkward and disruptive enough to make your shoulders climb up to your ears in sympathy. It’s not the worst Will has ever heard— he surely must have done worse in his early days — but it’s so unexpected and alien coming from Hannibal, that Will can’t help the burst of explosive laughter. He quickly slaps both hands over his own mouth and looks up at Hannibal to access the exact amount of trouble he’s in. 

But Hannibal isn’t looking at him at all. He’s looking down at the body of the guitar in abject horror, as if the very materials that make up the instrument had betrayed him. 

And that’s infinitely more impossible to handle, so Will gives up on any semblance of control and lets his body fall backwards into the bed and covers his face as painful, eye-watering, chest-heaving laughter takes over him. 

Will doesn’t hear or see Hannibal move, but he feels it when he lies down next to him and gently uncovers his face. “How curious of love, to make me wish I could fail a thousand times, just to watch you react in such a way,” Hannibal mutters against Will’s skin as he kisses his tears away, “not very productive.” 

The words, albeit not entirely surprising, come like a blow. They leave him dizzy and breathless and, as quickly as it came, Will’s laughter dissipates and softens into a smile so honest, it aches. Will feels his face heating up and he fights the childish urge to hide behind his hands again. 

Hannibal buries his nose in Will’s neck, pressing a smile against the flushed skin, undoubtedly delighted by the involuntary response. 

Will is about to say something snarky, but Hannibal must somehow feel the words forming, because he chooses that exact moment to bite at the base of his throat. 

Will gasps and his hand instinctively shoots up to grab at the back of Hannibal’s head, but once it gets there, it does nothing but sink into Hannibal’s hair, nails scraping against his scalp. 

“It pleases you to find a limitation in my abilities,” Hannibal states, entirely too composed for someone who’s probably mentally going through a hundred different ways to take Will apart. 

“Limits are just borders, lines to describe the shapes of things. I guess I just like feeling up your borders,” Will reasons breathlessly, and then moves his hands to do just that. 

Hannibal must be charmed enough, for he decides to reward Will with a proper kiss. Will’s almost too distracted by it to remember how they got there in the first place. Almost. 

“Hold on,” he pushes Hannibal back a little, as if he has something important to say, “shouldn’t I leave you to resume your practice, doctor? You sounded like you needed it,” Will asks, with as much gravity as he can muster. But his victory is short-lived. Hannibal’s hand travels south and grips just a little too tight, for just a little too long and Will’s smirks quickly morphs into bared teeth. 

“I think I’d rather play something I’m actually good at, for now.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Will pretends to think hard, “Like what? Poker?” 

That’s when Hannibal’s free hand makes its way under Will’s back to press hard at the spot right below his shoulder blade, that Will still can’t decide if it’s a side-effect-of-his-shoulder-injuries thing or just a Hannibal-thing, but it surely wasn’t always there, and Will yelps embarrassingly loud. His feet kick out reflexively and he chokes on nothing but air. 

Hannibal looks at him with faux contrition, and then: “Ah, sorry to interrupt. You were saying?” 

Will has just about had it with Hannibal’s bullshit, so instead of wasting more breath, he just pulls him down for another kiss. It’s not much of a punishment, but at least it shuts him up. 

“Now,” Will pants when they pull apart for air, and starts to gently but intently push Hannibal down the bed by his shoulders “what do you say we put those hands for better use?” 

When Hannibal’s shoulders shake with silent laughter, even if it’s impossible to say at whose expense it is at that point, Will marks it down as another win for him.

**Author's Note:**

> if the widower was some vile wife-murdering type or if his only crime was being rude to the wrong pair of cannibals, that's entirely up to you 🖤
> 
> title from john milton's paradise lost, book ix, 235-241:
> 
> "Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed  
> Labor, as to debar us when we need  
> Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,  
> Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse  
> Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow,  
> To brute denied, and are of love the food,  
> Love not the lowest end of human life;"
> 
> comments/kudos are, of love, the food and stuff
> 
> reigninhell on tumblr


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